


The End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine?)

by Crankygrrl



Category: Terminator - All Media Types, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
Genre: Alternate Universe, Zombie Apocalypse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-08-23
Updated: 2008-08-23
Packaged: 2018-10-16 07:35:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,590
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10566624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crankygrrl/pseuds/Crankygrrl
Summary: This is not the Apocalypse you were looking for.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Credit and thanks to [](http://taraljc.livejournal.com/profile)[taraljc](http://taraljc.livejournal.com/) for introducing me to the idea that John is a weapon Sarah has shaped to use against Skynet.

The holocaust was supposed to come at the metal hands of the machines — circuits and motherboards not viruses and infection vectors. But it looked like the human race’s ability to fuck itself surpassed even Sarah Connor’s nightmares.

Sarah crouched at the corner of the window and watched the figures shuffling along the street below. She pulled the AR-15 tight against her shoulder and glassed the street with her scope. The infected kept staggering along, past the door to the factory. Right past them, like they weren’t even there. Good.

The good news: the metal was impervious to the virus. They wouldn't starve as long as the Tin Girl could scavenge food but the number of infected was growing.

They needed to get out of LA.

Soon.

Sarah turned from the window and picked John out of the shadows were he sat in the corner farthest from any potential breach-point and under the ladder that led to the roof. They'd make their last stand up there, if they had to. He caught her looking. Derek and the other one were downstairs, waiting for Cameron to return but the kid was curled up asleep, tucked into the side of his body like a puppy. John rolled his eyes and shrugged. Troubled, Sarah turned back to the street.

Sarah didn't want to but she couldn't help thinking about the kid. About how good John was with him. Was that how it was in the camps? In the future that won't be, might still be? She hadn't meant to eavesdrop but sound carried across the empty factory floor.

The kid had woke up scared, looking for his brother. She hadn't missed the look John gave her, the 'isn't this mom stuff your job' look. She'd just ignored it, kept her eyes on the street, let John handle the kid or not. Whatever.

Babysitting had not been a featured activity in the 'future leader of humanity' training regime. It was mystery to her where John learned to gentle a five-year-old out of a nightmare. But he'd done it, convinced the kid that they were going to be safe, that they'd get out of the city, away from the monsters. But Sarah smiled when the kid asked John how he knew, remembering John at four when every other word out of his mouth was a question. More questions than she had answers, and for every answer, four more questions.

Then John said, see my mom? She's not going to let anything happen to us and Sarah had bit down hard on her bottom lip to keep from telling John to shut up.

The kid had looked at her. Sarah didn't need to be watching to know he was studying her. Is she like a soldier or something? Derek said the soldiers would come for us. She heard John shake his head, felt his eyes on her. Better than that, he said. My mom's a hero.

Sarah swallowed. Her hands went white on her rifle. _I volunteered._ She still remembers the words like it was yesterday not 18 years in her past. _It was an honor. A chance to meet the legend._

Don't do it — she nearly said it but she couldn't turn around. Worse than the things crawling up through the streets was what Sarah thought she might see if she looked behind her.

Things had been bad between them. Bad for a while. The story John told — about how she had protected him and trained him from when he was just a kid, trained him so he could fight when the monsters came — was his way of saying sorry: the apology she would never accept, turned into a first-grader's bedtime story. It was John's way of saying he understood. Finally, at the end of all things, he understood. Sarah hated it.

Sarah hated it as much as she wanted to believe he didn't know what he was doing. She could hear the kid listen, imagine him look back and forth between her and her son, hear him beg John to keep talking but quietly because he was kind of afraid of her, hear the skepticism turn to awe as John talked.

By the time the kid drifted off again, John was hoarse. The one story would turn into two, would turn into five, would turn into a legend if they lived long enough.

Assuming they lived. California was the most populous state in the union. Perfect place to drop a virus.

Can a computer learn from mistakes that haven't happened yet? There were computers, massively powerful computers running trillions of calculations per second involved in viral research — coincidence?

Nuclear weapons presented a risk to Skynet's infrastructure. But disease? That would wipe out the wetware problem and leave the hardware intact. And the machines weren't affected by the virus. Living tissue over a hyper-alloy combat chassis wasn't alive.

Maybe this was the apocalypse they'd been waiting for. Maybe it wasn't. Either way, Sarah couldn't say no when Derek went out and came back with the two boys. If the situation had been reversed, if it had been John, it wouldn't have been a question. And in a way, it was John's life on the line. In a horrible, sick, fucked-up way, her son's life depended on keeping the kid alive. If this was Judgement Day.

Behind her, the kid moaned in his sleep as John shifted out from under him. A quiet word and he settled back down. Her son moved across the floor on light, silent feet like he'd been taught to join her by the window. He crouched beside her, keeping as much out of sight as he could and still see the street - no one knew what kind of visual acuity these things had and Sarah didn't much want to find out.  
  
Neither spoke for a moment.

“How is he?”

He shrugged. “Okay. Scared.”

“You were good with him.”

John's mouth hardened. “Yeah, well.”

In profile, the light from the street slanting across his face, he reminded her of Kyle so that Sarah had to stop herself turning around to check that the boy was still behind him.  
  
_He'll find us, won't he?_ she’d asked.

In 20 years, all she'd done is come full circle. But this time it was on her to keep them safe, find a way to hide them, fight off the monsters outside the door.

Kyle died that night.

John was conceived that night.

This night, she'd listened to her son play father to the boy who would have, might still become his father. Circles within circles, a giant moebius strip, the snake always biting its own tale. It was enough to make you crazy, thinking about all this.

Out on the street, things moved in the shadows.

They tensed. Sarah put the rifle to her shoulder and glassed the alley...

“Just a cat.”

John chuckled as his body relaxed.

“That was some story you told,” Sarah said.

“It's the only good one I know.”

“John...” Sarah didn't know what she wanted to say. That he didn’t have to do it or maybe she just wanted to say sorry, sorry for not dealing, for dumping this mess in his lap, sorry for being his mother. She tried again: “John…”.

John shook his head. “It's okay. Cameron said we were in a Skynet camp together,” he glanced at the boy behind him, “I guess we're just a little ahead of schedule.”  
  
“You don't have to—”  
  
“It's okay, Mom. It's fine.” He looked at her, resolved, his decision made. Sarah felt the bottom of her stomach open up and flood with guilt and anger.  
  
_I volunteered. It was an honor. A chance to meet the legend. Sarah Connor. Who taught her son to fight...organize, prepare. From when he was a kid. When you were in hiding, before the war._

She'd taught and John had learned. From the very best, he'd said.

Kyle Reese would be his weapon against Skynet. Just like John Connor was hers. Trained, raised from childhood, prepared, the perfect soldier, the ideal lieutenant, a man John Connor could trust, literally, with his life.

No matter how much John might want to make another choice, there was too much — too many — at stake. Kyle Reese would never be just John's father. John Connor would never be just her son.

Sarah saw it in his face, in the set of his shoulders, in his fixed stare out the window. Decision made, bridges burned.

“Hey,” she reached for him, cupped his chin with her hand and tugged gently, forced him to look at her. “I love you, John. Always, forever, no take backs.”

She pressed her forehead to his briefly and kissed his cheek.  
  
“Love you, too, Mom.”  
  
Sarah nodded. “Try to get some sleep.”  
  
After a moment, John got up and walked back to the pallet where Kyle slept. Sarah watched as he hesitated for a moment before lying down beside the kid. The kid reached out for him again, and John tensed but didn't move away. Sarah turned back to her watch. In time, John's breathing took on the slow steady rhythm of sleep.

When Cameron got back, they'd work on a plan for getting out of the city. All of them.  
  
Maybe this wasn't the apocalypse they were looking for. Maybe it was. Either way... Sarah looked at John and Kyle, the only two people she'd ever loved totally and without reservation in her life. Either way, it was going to be a fucking dogfight.

(1,600)


End file.
